Chris Grabenstein - The Black Heart Crypt

“I didn’t take one,” Malik said proudly as they trudged up a muddy tractor path. “There’s really no need for a map if you already know how to solve the puzzle. Right turn!”

“Right.”

Zack was wondering if maybe they should try taking a couple of left turns. He sensed they were somewhere in the middle of the maze. He glanced up at the bright blue sky, hoping the sun might give him a hint as to what direction they were heading, but it was noon, so the sun was directly overhead. Against its blazingly bright light, Zack saw a black crow circling the cornfield. He figured that was why the maze needed so many scarecrow decorations.

“You know,” said Zack, “I haven’t seen any other people for like five minutes.”

“Because they all got lost,” said Malik. “Right turn.”

“Right.”

Zack followed Malik around another bend and up to a T intersection.

They were facing a solid wall of withered corn.

Before Malik could say “Right turn” again, a dead man with a watermelon-sized head walked straight out of the cornstalks like those baseball players in that movie—only this wasn’t Iowa and the guy wasn’t there to play ball.

Zipper snarled.

The ghost grinned. His teeth were an Indian corn checkerboard of browns and blacks.

“Trick or treat, smell my feet. Give me something good to eat.” He hawked up a big laugh. “Hello again, kid.”

“Hello, Mad Dog,” said Zack.

“Pardon?” said Malik, about to follow the path to the right.

Zack gestured at Mad Dog Murphy, a notorious (and very dead) criminal from the 1950s. Malik, of course, couldn’t see the guy, or the metal helmet from the electric chair sizzling on top of his stubbly head.

“Is it a ghost?” gasped Malik.

Zack nodded.

The crow floating overhead in lazy circles started to laugh: “Haw-haw-haw.”

“So,” said Mad Dog, “where is it?”

“Where’s what?” said Zack.

“The thingamajig.”

“Huh?”

“Come on, kid. Barnabas already figured out you’re a Jennings. Word to the wise? You shouldn’t spend so much time in graveyards. You do, dead people pick up stuff, learn things you don’t want ’em learnin’.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“What’s he saying?” asked Malik.

“Nothing,” said Zack.

“Nothing?” snarled Mad Dog, his chest swelling.

This was the first time Zack had seen Mr. Murphy when he wasn’t sitting down, strapped into his electric chair, the one they’d executed him in at the state penitentiary back in 1959. The guy had to be at least seven feet tall.

“Look, kid—Little Paulie’s a pal of mine. We holed up in that barn over there once when the cops was chasin’ us. Good times. Now Paulie wants out. So give his people what they’re looking for. Or else.”

Mad Dog Murphy vanished.

In his place, Zack could see the shadow of the circling bird. When he looked up, the crow’s wings stretched out wide as it swooped into dive-bomb mode—aiming straight for Zack.

“Crow!” Zack shouted.

“Actually,” said Malik, “I believe that’s a raven. Note the wedge shape of its tail feathers and …”

“Come on!” Zack grabbed Malik and they started running up the alley of corn. Zipper was hot on their heels.

“Zack?” yelled Malik. “Ravens often attack small dogs!”

Zack bent down and grabbed Zipper off the ground. “Shortcut!” he shouted.

Dog in arms, Malik right behind him, Zack mowed through the walls of the maze, trampling down crispy, crackly cornstalks, plowing forward till they finally came out in a muddy field right beside an inflatable light-up pumpkin the size of a small toolshed.

Zack glanced over his shoulder.

The big black bird pulled up, banked left, and shot off toward the horizon.

“Haw-haw-haw!” It was still laughing at them.

“Hey, Malik?” said Zack, catching his breath and brushing corn crap off his clothes.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s not tell Judy about this, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Well, if we do, I think my mom and dad might lock me in my room till I turn thirteen.”

“Is that when ghosts leave kids alone, when they turn thirteen?”

“I hope so,” said Zack with a sigh. “I hope so.”

Later thatafternoon, Norman Ickes stood behind the counter at Ickes & Son Hardware on Main Street, fidgeting with his brand-new Nut Case, a shiny brass puzzle that looked like two hexagonal nuts screwed around the center of a half-inch bolt that had one head at the top and another at the bottom.

“It looks simple, but it isn’t,” he said to his young customer, a fellow puzzle maven named Malik Sherman, who was well on his way to Nerdsville, a neighborhood where Norman Ickes had lived for most of his twenty-four miserable years. “The goal is to remove the small nut hidden inside the hollow bolt without cutting the whole thing open with a hacksaw.”

“Have you figured out the solution yet?” asked Malik.

“No.” Now even Malik, a fellow loser, was working his nerves. He wished the kid would butt out and let him fidget in peace.

“Well, good luck with it, Norman. My dad and I are here looking for pumpkin-carving tools. I picked out a doozy this morning down at Paproski’s Pumpkin Patch.”

“Will you be carving a jack-o’-lantern or something a bit more interesting, say a Halloween scene sculpted in silhouette?”

“Definitely a silhouette,” said Malik. “Much more challenging and, therefore, rewarding.”

Norman nodded. Any idiot could take a butcher knife and slice triangle eyes and a row of jagged teeth into a hollowed-out gourd. It took skill, patience, and the proper tools to create a pumpkin masterpiece.

“Aisle two. Seasonal items.”

“Awesome. Thanks, Norman! Catch you later.”

The kid bounded over to aisle two. Norman reached into the plastic pumpkin on the counter and palmed a few more pieces of candy corn. The high-fructose sugar rush helped him focus.

Concentrating intensely, Norman worked the two center nuts around and around, then dabbed at the perspiration beading up on his forehead with the tip of his green striped tie, the one his mother had given him for Christmas. It had come in a box with a matching short-sleeve green shirt. A prepackaged, easy-to-wrap combo.

“Whatcha doin’, Nor-man?”

Norman looked up and saw an idiot grinning at him.

It was his coworker with the shaved head, the no-neck Neanderthal Stephen Snertz, whose young cousins, Norman had learned, terrorized all the children of any intelligence at Malik Sherman’s middle school.

Stephen Snertz had droopy eyes and half a goatee neatly trimmed on his chin. Judging by his very consistent stubble, he apparently shaved his upper lip and cheeks whenever he shaved his head.

Why Norman’s dad had hired this moron to work in the Ickes & Son family hardware store, Norman would never know.

Maybe because Snertz had been the star of the high school football team six years ago, back when Norman had been president of the chess club.

Maybe because Norman’s dad was a bigger wimp than Norman, always letting people push him around. His father even let Snertz keep a Smith & Wesson pistol tucked under the counter near the cash register for “security purposes.”

“What kind of screwy bolt is that, you nut?” said Snertz, raiding the plastic pumpkin, scooping up every last piece of candy corn.

“It’s a brainteaser.”

Something you’ll never need , he wanted to add, seeing how you don’t have a brain .